I am turning into a theory slut

[The Chase]

Creating original art with conventional "rules" is the sign of true originality (if you cant tell I've had this conversation a few times).

Discuss.

[vurt]

its not about searching for originality,its about expression

[The Chase]

its not about searching for originality,its about expression

Which really brings it down to what motivates your desire to create music.

People (like me) often don't realize how dimensional arguements like this are.

[Sascha Franck]

Hm, wanted to reply to this earlier but forgot.

I'd say certainly yes, but there is a question of spontaneity. How spontaneous can one even manage to be while referencing a catalog of theory-derived progressions and tension/resolution concepts in real time? Particularly at high speed?

Good point. I'd say it's impossible.
IMO there's a mixture of both calling up sort of "automated chops" and the way you're combining them - which could be pretty creative, assuming you (a) try to keep the automatically called up fragments as short as possible (longer runs allways seem to be some circus show off...) and (b)have a lot of them at your disposal. Just like freestyle rappers might have many small phrases in their memory, rather than complete (and complexed) sentences.
I try to take this into account for my own playing and for my teaching. I ask my students not to learn a whole scale in a certain pattern but rather tell them to concentrate on, say, smaller 4-note patterns which they should become comfortable with all over the fretboard.

I would argue that theory might introduce you to many new options you might not have anticipated on your own, but if you are expected to improvise, you will need very strong spontaneous creative instincts as well.

Defenitely. But when it comes to improvising, it's not theoretical knowledge alone. It's the physical memory we're developing automatically as well. And, unless you practise something entirely different every day, learn a new instrument each week and so on, there's no way you won't develop those physical memory skills in one way or the other. This isn't even related to theory. And it's also the reason why it's so tough to get rid of bad habits.

However, in my case I'd say that theory helped with developing improvisation skills (doesn't help much *while* improvising though). Let's just take a very simple example: At one time, when studying scale/chord relationships, I stumbled over the fact that there's 3 plain minor pentatonics to be found in each major scale (on 2nd, 4th and 6th degree). That was like "oh, cool, I can now use the pentatonic licks I allready know at three positions". Eventually I tried some Bminor and Eminor pentatonic patterns over an Aminor (dorian) vamp (so Amin would be 2nd degree of a Gmaj scale context, Bmin would be 4th, Emin 6th) - lo and behold, it freaking worked!
Of course those patterns needed to be adapted a bit, they were sounding more "open" - but still, most likely I'd never found out about them without my theoretical knowledge/analysis.

As for the rest of your post, I couldn't agree more.

Cheers.

[Amberience]

Music for me is about the moment.

If you use the A# Dorian scale thirty times in a Frippertronix piece, every piece is still going to sound different. Each moment of each track is going to be different, a new experience.

Of course if you're listening to Frippertronics music for the fact that it is in a particular key, then you're probably not listening to it for the right reasons.

Same goes for loads of other different theories or styles.

[funkychickendance]

BTW, I hope some of the ToTC and Sascha explanations about the evolution of theory make it to the Wiki.

/fcd

[Frippertronix]

I guess I'd also have to say that improvising is just plain hard any way you try to handle it. I saw John McGlaughlin one night at Yoshi's in Oakland, CA, and wasn't really that happy with his playing. A few weeks later a friend got a bootleg tape of the next night's performance and it had me on the floor. Just my luck, I guess, that I'd seen him on an off night.

There is so much complexity and constant change in music, one can't be expected to sort it out that well all the time. I guess we just have to be thankful for those times when everything just seems to flow like milk and honey.

[Frippertronix]

If you use the A# Dorian scale thirty times in a Frippertronix piece, every piece is still going to sound different. Each moment of each track is going to be different, a new experience.

True, but which scale is good enough to make it to the startup screen of Microsoft Vista?

[Amberience]

Chromatic

[Frippertronix]

Chromatic

I just know it was "human", "blue and green sometimes brown", and "confident", so I don't know what the theoretical basis is for that but i'm sure Fripp is all over it.

[Hink]

aren't these threads gettin kinda old? Are yah makin music? Are yah having fun? Does it matter if I make my music different than how you make yours?

[deaf dunderkwac]

we should all make music exactly the same way with the same mix with the same...
wait a minute... thats pop radio!

[aaastronomer]

Learning music theory started out as something pretty simple... I had been noodling around with music for awhile, and just wanted to make something that was listenable, and didn't sound totally crappy.

I started at the very basics, and learned scales... this was pretty cool, because I could suddenly make songs that sounded like songs instead of random collections of notes. Yup, scales were pretty cool, and I could make some darn good EBM with them.

Just knowing scales did me pretty well for awhile, but I didn't understand these weird "chord" things. I knew what they were, but I had no idea how to use them. It took me a long time to figure out that you had to use them with the idea of a "key" to make "chord progressions". They day I figured this out, it blew my mind.

Around this time, I started becoming very good friends with some people who didn't listen to much music in 4/4 time, and I got verbally abused into learning different time signatures. Like certain other things, it was painful at first, but eventually I learned to relax and enjoy it.

Things are starting to get really out of hand now. I've been learning more and more theory, and I fear I'm starting to get a little obsessed with it. In fact, today I was walking to the grocery store, reflecting on a small musical sketch I wrote earlier. I was suddenly hit with the sickening realization that (No, I didn't leave a burner on. I didn't leave the door unlocked. I didn't even forget to bring the cat in) I had written the entire chord progression without using any suspended chords, and only one inversion. I couldn't believe it, and rushed back home to open up my sequencer and change the progression.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. I still have my all-consuming desire to learn more theory, through books, discussion and experimentation. A large part of it is that I just seem to have alot less fun making music when I'm not also trying to learn new things to do with it; the theory drives the willingness to create. Another aspect is the challenge of making something with rules you're not quite sure of.

I realize that in the end, the only person that my music has to satisfy is myself, but I've gotten to that really agonizing point where I keep wondering whether it's me or the theory that's determining how my music sounds. Does anyone here have any thoughts?

are you at the point where you can start out with just a scheme (say, a visual analog, a set of keys to bridge between, and a motif), then write out the whole piece without resort to a musical instrument of any kind, and have it (mostly) work the very first time?

[ATS]

"I realize that in the end, the only person that my music has to satisfy is myself"

honestly I think this might be a problem for some people because they make music that no one really likes except for them and maybe two other people. I rather try to music that maybe say 1 of 100 people will like instead of 1 in 10000.

[aaastronomer]

It's kind of strange how people tend to splinter off into either " I hate established conventional music and only like experimental/edgy/underground stuff" or "Soundscape/noise knob tweakers are not musicians--they are a joke" camps. Why can't people just embrace ALL musical styles and all time periods? Does it have to be one or the other? Isn't that kind of limiting? I personally try to appreciate, understand, compose, and enjoy all types of music, and I think I'm far happier and fulfilled that way. To only like certain types of music is similar to only watching one or two genres of films. You won't get as much enjoyment out of life being that way. It's much better to be able to enjoy watching all genres of films.

all i know, is that: i hate mozart! (just too many notes!!)

give me the architectonic! (palestrina, bach, shostakovich, beethoven, richard strauss, united states of america, japan, orbital, hybrid, etc.)